One fall day, Kate goes with her father, a fish biologist, to the river where he works -- a river in the Pacific rain forest -- the "salmon forest, " as he calls it. Together they watch the sockeye salmon returning to the river to spawn, and witness a bear scooping up a salmon. Next, Kate and her dad run into a Native boy named Brett and his family fishing at a pool in the river. From her adventures, Kate discovers how the forest and the salmon need each other and why the forest is called the salmon forest. David Suzuki and Sarah Ellis's charming and informative text and Sheena Lott's watercolors magically evoke the spirit and mystery of the West Coast rain forest.